4th page: Dabbler’s jumping off the building, Max is floating down and Sydney is looking happy as she jumps with empty hands! The blue ball should be lodged into a palm for her not to be scared of her mind.

I had the same thought, but given the dynamic position with her reaching forward and Dabbler doing a giant-leap pose, I’m assuming that someone just said something highly badass, and Sydney decided that jumping off the building and grabbing the flight orb on the way down would be appropriately epic, and has not yet had time for second thoughts.

I personally love Julie’s simply because it closely matches the original art style of the characters. One could almost forget it wasn’t fan art. Also I could so see it being used for a video game, maybe a beat ’em up or something along those lines.

Love the cameo, though I have to say, “balance” is a tough story to start reading your strip on. It took me a few pages to realize there were two separate stories going on, and the strip wasn’t bouncing between scenes. I got it figured out. Just took me longer than it probably should have.

The fourth one down is interesting, however with a slight inaccurate piece. Halo is flying there right? Then I’d have to ask how she is staying in the air without holding an orb? Great picture otherwise, and I love how the scene looks, maybe Dabbler is doing something to keep her in the air otherwise Halo should be falling dramatically. Other than that one detial, as I said, this is a great picture and I enjoy the others as well.

I find that piece phenomenally interesting myself. The angle chosen and the dynamics involved are both captivating and intriguing.

Whilst I note your valid point, that Halo must be falling, I always look for the intended dynamics first, or a reasonable explanation, failing that. In this case I think the former can be intuited, if you reflect on it.

The most prominent objects,* in the foreground, are the blue flyball and the purple force field orb. Further our eyes are drawn to both of these as that is where Halo’s eye line leads. Emphasised by her outstretched hand, reaching for the purple orb. However we can also see that Sydney has her right hand cupped, and pointing towards the flyball.

Given that Halo can mentally summon the orbs, into both of her hands, in the blink of an eye, I would say that the smile, on her face, is due to the fact that she is confident that she will not be falling for more than the briefest of moments!

* Obviously the things our eyes are initially drawn to though are the characters, and their faces. Both because our brains have that instinct built in and because they are centrally placed. Despite that though, the foreground orbs are shown in extreme close up, so stand out, from the point of view that we normally only see them as small objects around Halo.

I had an exhaustive proof here, But I realize that I waaaaay overthink…everything, (especially webcomics) So, I’m just gonna throw this out there and see who agrees. Sydney isn’t a superhero. She’s a Gorram Space Ship. The only question is whether she’s the Millennium Falcon, The Enterprise, or the Tardis. Think about it. Her power suite, the fact that aliens exist, and most (if not all) super stuff exists because of them. Also they leave their genetics lying around, (in the usual fashion,) which explains most super-people. And Math’s line about there being no such thing as “just human”. after a very short time, the interesting ancestry would be all over the place.

So, my theory is that the orbs consist of an ancient alien spaceship landed or crashed on Earth (probably crashed), which called to Sydney because A: she’s compatible, or more likely, B: she has the appropriate genome, or most likely C: Both.

Syd is (probably) an Alien decendant, which explains her, well, her-ness, food choices and the like. Apparently her race likes food that is weapons grade spicy. It may even explain certain personality quirks, ADD could be multitasking, her semi-vegetarianism could be some inborn crew care response. And her “level up” system? Possibly a repair display, or opening up options as power (or resources) become available. This explains why Pixel freaked out. (A math Nerd shown the unified field theorem.)

what do you think guys? Am I way off? am I way overthinking a webcomic? (I already know that) Did I post this theory first or did someone beat me to it?

OK, I was reading the author’s notes on this story arc, & I was waiting for a certain point for clarity, but it looks like the story is taking a hard-left turn from where I was expecting it to go (though I have to admit I did sort of expect Sydney to get left behind, I guess my “preferred” expectation overruled my “common sense” expectation).

So, if you’re still planning on answering this in the story or in the notes, just tell me to not get my panties in a twist & I’ll wait….but….

….why did Harem get all muddled & confused & flop-into-Hiro’s-arms-y when they got to Sciona’s home planet? I mean, I have a rather obvious theory as to why, but I’d like to know if my theory is the only explanation of if you had a more detailed concept for it….

On a related note to my first question (related in that Harem is obviously my favorite of your characters), I have a couple of follow ups:

Which one of her is the “original”, & in what order were the other four created?

Lolita-Harem & Vogue-Harem are the only ones with totally natural hair-colors (barring Lolita’s purple bangs). The others have unnatural (Strawberry & Punk) or extremely unlikely to be natural (Vanilla) colors. I can only assume that blonde is her original hair-color, since it’s a hell of a lot easier to die blonde hair black than it is to dye black hair….well, any other color, really.

Don’t forget that supers “natural” skin and hair colour can transform, when they gain their powers (usually during adolescence). For example Maxima was not born with golden skin and purple hair.

I say this because the strawberry blonde Harem (the one depicted as having pink hair, as opposed to the regular blonde), is actually the original. You can confirm this by checking out DaveB‘s Deviant Art page, and locating Harem’s photo-shoot. The one with pink hair has no tattoos, whereas all the others do.

Hence she is the ‘vanilla’ Harem, from which other copies get made (with no tattoos or dyed hair, until she visits Barberian).

I can see the logic of your argument, but I’m afraid I have to provide a counter-argument….

….just because Strawberry has no visible tats doesn’t mean that she is by default the original….

She is only 19, so she hasn’t had all that much time to be tattooed….so any of her bodies that have tattoos would have had to have been done after her last birthday (at *most* a year ago), or otherwise have had it done before she was legally old enough.

Besides, none of them have anything identical far as I can tell.

Given that she estimated her combined age to be somewhere around 50, I have to assume that all five of her bodies have been around for much longer than that. She would have had to have gotten all five of herself inked up individually once she became legally old enough to get tats.

As for her hair dye & style jobs, that’s easy enough to change with a good stylist, & she wouldn’t be limited to the last year.

Having said all of that, you are right in that it seems like Strawberry is the least fashionably-modified of the five, having no visible tats, no obvious piercings, & a fairly simple & long hairstyle.

I can see your logic in her keeping her ‘original self’ unmodified (except for possibly hair dye) to prevent any potential future additions to her ‘harem’ from being stuck with tats that she already has or give her more flexibility on changing her hair style.

I guess I should have mentioned that the author has explicitly stated that the strawberry blonde Harem is the vanilla one, with no tattoos. So the picture identification process is just to pick out that the pink-haired one is the one being described as strawberry blonde. Given that she does have a blonde version, and what people define as ‘strawberry blonde’ varies a lot, that is a useful double-check.

However there is no doubt about it, due to both the above and the fact that Dave has referred to her as that in blogs when only the pink haired one was visible.

So, if we have “Strawberry-Harem”, “Vogue-Harem”, “Lolita-Harem” & “Punk-Harem”, what does the author call the one with white hair & glasses?

I’ve read those four terms used to describe Harem’s bodies either in the comic itself or in the comments, but I haven’t found anything to describe that fifth body that she seems to use as Deus’ playmate….

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